


A Clouded Looking-Glass

by librariansheart



Category: Kushiel's Dart, Kushiel's Legacy - Jacqueline Carey
Genre: Abusive Relationships, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Canon Related, Canon Relationships, Coercion, Headcanon, M/M, Mirror Sex, Nicknames, Oral Sex, POV First Person, Prostitution
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-21
Updated: 2016-08-21
Packaged: 2018-08-10 06:09:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7833316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/librariansheart/pseuds/librariansheart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What happened the night of Alcuin nó Delaunay's first assignation?  And his last?</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Clouded Looking-Glass

I have made many mistakes in my career as a Servant of Naamah, I thought, but this was surely not one of them. The outfit was simple, familiar as Phedre’s pout. Prince of stablehands. It lay spread across my bed, flawless as it had been the night I had first worn it.

 

I have never been so nervous, or excited! Not even to meet my new foster-sister. Not even to see the new house I was to live in. No, this is my night to shine. My night to draw in the clients Delaunay wants! My night to make him finally proud of me. Not to mention that I will finally learn what it truly means to be a Servant of Naamah.

My lord Delaunay has told me what he has planned, and told me what I am to learn of the ones who are most likely to out-bid the rest, and I am practically buzzing with the secrecy of it all. This is it. He trusts me. I can do what he has trained me to do, and help him in a way that no one else can!

The fine cambric is smooth and cool against my skin, and by the time my trembling hands have finished with the fastenings and set everything in place, my hair has dried too. I turn to the mirror, and the sight catches my breath. There in the glass is a faerie. A moonspirit. The stablehand to the gods, surely. Not the ragged bastard son of a disgraced soldier and a destitute mother. 

I step closer, and my wond’ring fingertips brush cold glass. I am ready.

 

He sent his carriage for me. A simple mistake of communication, and yet I cannot help feeling, as the door closes and leaves me in the dim, plush silence, that a cage has snapped shut about me. But this will be the last time. After tonight, I will be through. Through with him, through with his demands, through with trying to pull the one piece of information I never could retrieve from him. Through with the long baths and harsh sand. Through with the lies and desperate trinkets. Through with the faint air of disappointment in my lord’s study when I must shake my head and report another failure.

I sat back against the seat cushions as the carriage pulled out into the streets and picked up speed, closing my eyes. One more night. I must compose myself. This, at least, is very different than our first meeting.

 

His eyes meet mine across the crowded room, the half-Caerdicci merchant and I, and I know in an instant that he will be the one. I have stunned him with a glance, hooked him with a turn, and with a soft smile, I have him fast. I hoped I might have someone a little more impressive, to perhaps boost my reputation and intrigue the more difficult patrons, and I might still yet be wrong! But I know I am not.

I have never seen a man so openly desirous as Vitale Bouvarre. Surely even the rest of the guests must see it? Every motion, the way that he licks his lips and follows me with glance and trailing step? Am I the only one who knows?

Of course not. My lord knows. And Phedre too, by the look of her. She’s jealous again, and some part of me cannot help but be a little pleased by it.

All through the bidding, I watch, and for a time it seems like someone else might outbid him, but I smile as he lofts it higher, and I can see the effect it has on him. You would have to be blind not to, I think. I wonder what kind of man he is, and if he will be gentle. He’ll want to touch, and kiss, and get my clothes off as soon as he can. I hope that he does not tear the shirt. It is the nicest I have ever had, and I should like to keep it.

It is over so quickly, for all that it felt interminable while it was happening, and there is a contract, and my signature and his, and then he holds out his hand for mine, and it suddenly feels all too real.

This is it. This is the moment I leave with my first patron, never to return as I am now. I cannot help looking back, searching for the only one in this grand assembly who truly matters. He stands out among them - he always has - and I search his face. This is what he wants? This is what he needs of me? He won’t step forward and announce that he has changed his mind?

No. He is impassive, and I know what I must do. I set my hand in Bouvarre’s and we vanish into the night.

It is cold out, compared to the hot press of people indoors, but Bouvarre seems to be carrying all that heat with him in his person. Desire consumes him like a flame consumes paper, and for the first time I feel a flicker of unease. But he smiles, and so do I, and there is his fine carriage with its matched horses in the drive, and the familiar, silent figure of Guy beside it, and I am reassured. Everything will be fine. I will do well, and I will return in triumph, in more ways than one, I am sure of it.

I am the only pale thing in the carriage once the door is shut. His colors are dark, and in the night everything appears black. I choose to sit beside him instead of across, laying my hand lightly upon his, but I never get a chance to speak. In a moment, his hands are about my face, his mouth hard and desperate upon mine, and I do everything in my power to respond with the training I have worked so hard to master, but I hardly get the opportunity. And truly, I am not entirely certain that I want to.

It is flattering, to feel him, unable to wait, unable to even converse, eager to touch and stroke and pull me close, and it fans the desire inside me. I want to do well for him. I want to make this worth the ridiculous sum of money he paid for this night. The carriage ride is neither steady enough nor long enough for everything, but…

Gentle but insistent, I wind my arms about his neck and press back against him till I can straddle his lap in the small space. We are both breathing hard already, and the cool air is rapidly becoming almost too warm. He groans when he feels my arousal, and his hands pull me even closer, kneading my buttocks as he grinds up against me. It is my turn to initiate the kiss, slower, sweeter, and more tentative, but I want this, and he does too, and it is not hard to show him a few of the tricks of the tongue I might use elsewhere.

Ah, Naamah, I have not permitted myself to even practice the touches upon myself for a fortnight, and already the clothes which in the privacy of my chamber fit so neatly now feel far too snug for comfort, but oh, the friction between us! And he no less affected than I.

I must bow my head beside his, struggling to maintain proper breathing, and his fingers dip along the crease of my breeches, pulling a breathless sound from me that I did not know it was possible to make. He shudders beneath me and his hands tighten, his breath hitching. All from that one sound?

I roll my hips subtly against him and he groans. “Ah, my lord,” I breathe in his ear, “be gentle with me… You will have me spilt before we even reach your chambers…”

He swears beneath his breath and I can feel him twitch against my phallus, as I thought he might. It is going to be a long ride.

 

I could have traced the path to his chambers without a servant to guide me, I had been here so many times before. Seven times I had walked down these halls. Seven times these doors had opened. Seven times he had come to greet me, that strange, love-sick smile stretching his face into something grotesque. Seven times I had given myself to him, given him all he asked for and more. Seven times he sent me away with empty hands, an empty mind, and an empty heart, yet full of him.

He came to me now, painfully pleased to see me. He was already hoping that I had forgotten what I had come for and he could avoid it. I would not let him. Not tonight. Still, I had a service to perform, and until it was complete, I could set my purpose aside. Tonight would be the last time. I held that thought in my heart, shielding the tiny flame of resolve, for there was no hope left in me.

I smiled and wound my arms about his neck, melting against him as he liked best and nigh begging him for a kiss. I yielded, yielded, as he wished, and let him have the control he so longed for all his life. “My lord,” I breathed when he allowed it, gazing up into his face and hiding how much the words curdled on my tongue. “May I please you? Grant me permission, I beg of you.”

A sly smile twisted his lips and my stomach chilled. “No, my beauty. Not yet.”

“But my lord!” I protested, dropping to my knees before him.

He stroked my hair as if I were a prized hound, watching me with that eerie smile I had never yet seen. “No, Alcuin, not yet. Not that way. When I wish the _languisement_ , rest assured, I shall tell you so. No…” Stepping back, he eyed me and I bowed my head, my fears confirmed with his next words. “I think I wish to see you spill first this evening. I do so enjoy the sight of you stained with your own seed because of me.” My face heated with anger and embarrassment. I can and have done so before at his urging, for no patron likes to think himself unappealing. His hand appeared in my range of vision and tilted my head up as I school my expression into one of helpless hope. “Come in, my little star, and shine for me.”

“Yes, my lord, of course… thank you.”

 

We are barely inside when I fall to my knees before him and he buries his hands in my hair, and before long I have tasted the seed of another for the first time. It is stranger than I thought, both thicker and more bitter, but the sounds he makes and the eager gratitude he shows, the way he watches as I lick the overflow shyly from my fingers and apologize for my lack of discipline… It lights something warm and welcome in my chest and stirs in my stomach. He wants this so much - he wants me so much. I have never had this strong an emotion directed solely at me before and it is intoxicating.

He follows me down to the floor, cradling my face in his hands and running his thumb slowly over my lower lip, the callus scratching in places. Then he sets it to my tongue and I take it into my mouth, working my tongue over it just as I had his phallus, gazing into his eyes as I clean the excess seed from it.

“You are so beautiful,” he says hoarsely. I can feel the color rising in my cheeks and I cast my eyes down demurely. “Moonlight on snow, or snowdrops, pure as a star come to earth.” I cannot help but smile shyly. Such compliments. I heard similar at the party, but none uttered with such awe and feeling behind them as this.

“I am not so special as that, my lord, truly.”

He reacts well to that, his shoulders squaring, smile brightening, and he does not really know it. “Yes you are. My beautiful little star, come to rest in my house.” He kisses me, gentle at first, but he is hungry for me and it shows. It is so easy to give in to him and let him take what he wants from me, but I could lose myself in this if I am not careful.

He breaks away suddenly, breathing hard, staring into my face, and I smile, leaning in to lay light kisses over his cheek and brow, my hands smoothing up over his chest to work on the laces of his doublet. He shrugs it off quickly as soon as he can, pulling back to wrench his shirt off over his head before I even have a chance to test my skills, and suddenly I am confronted with the shock of dark curls upon his chest.

Ah… Yes, I should have been prepared for this. Especially from one not wholly of d’Angeline heritage. I kiss upon his collarbone, curiously running my fingertips through the hair and tracing the lines of the muscle beneath his skin. For all that he is a merchant, he does have some muscle tone to him, and he seems to delight in my taking notice, and even more as I begin to kiss a line down the center of his chest. My fingers skip off the tips of his nipples and skirt along his ribs, when suddenly he seizes my hands and pulls away, dragging me to my feet.

“Come, my little star. The floor is no place for such loveliness. I want nothing more than to see you splayed out in my bed.” He pauses a moment at the foot of the great blue-covered bed and pulls me in tightly, pressing his face into my hair. He is holding me a little too close, so that I am finding it a little difficult to breathe, and again I feel that shivering chill in my stomach, but then his voice chases it away. “I have wanted you from the moment I saw you, spread beneath me, calling my name… I will give you all you ever wanted, my star, if you will but shine for me.”

“I will, my lord,” I promised, pressing my cheek to his and moulding my form against him. “Oh I will.”

 

I arched from the bed with a cry as both fingers pressed into me without warning and only a little oil to ease their way. It burned, as always, and I writhed upon them as he liked so much, biting at my lower lip. A trembling moan made its way from my mouth as he began to work me open, his hot breath on my chest. “You always did love this,” he whispered, nearly hissing. “The first time you nearly spilled on the spot. I know all the best ways to tempt you and tease you. I taught you to know your own pleasures, little star. Do you really want to leave? To give all of this up?”

And at that moment, I did not. He was right. He did help me to find precisely the right place to press, making my breath come short and sensation tingle through every portion of my body. He knew just how and when to twist to make stars burn behind my eyes and make me keen for more. He discovered how sensitive my scalp is, and how even a gentle stroke can melt me into a moaning puddle. He knew just when to stop moving at all to make me beg and whimper and plead for him. He knew how much I wanted to please, and how a little murmured praise would heighten my pleasure, and a quiet command could have me over the edge in seconds all for the sake of pleasing him.

“I have done you a favor, bright star, and this is how you repay me? Begrudging my gifts, levying demands? Ah my little one, but who could love you as deeply and truly as I? Set aside this foolish nonsense and let me see you spill. _Now._ ”

 

Bright light breaks across my vision and I hardly hear my own voice ringing from the ceiling as I clutch helplessly at the bedclothes. My seed spatters, hotter than anything, across my stomach and chest, even my throat, it is so powerful. I am shaking, gasping for air, dazed and giving half-voiced apologies as my orgasm subsides, but he is there, one finger pressing against my lips as he hushes me. “No, no, that was beautiful, oh, Naamah, so beautiful! I can hardly wait to see it a second time.”

His finger circles and presses upon a point that has me breathless and stunned, tugging at the sheets and bucking involuntarily. Then it subsides and he is chuckling, not entirely kindly. “Do not worry, I will not insist on it again so soon. I will not hurt you. But nor can I wait much longer to be inside you.”

My heart leaps unevenly in my chest as he backs away, and suddenly his hand is gone and I am bereft. A needy whimper comes from me without permission, and I can hear him chuckle again. “Patience, patience. Why don’t you turn over. It will be easier for us both that way.”

My limbs do not cooperate the way I wish them to, and I scramble to comply somewhat less gracefully than I might wish. On my knees, then, with my face sideways in the pillows, I reach back and spread myself for him. The doves are back, beating their wings against my ribcage. A low, greedy sound comes from him as he sees what I have done, and almost immediately I can feel him behind me, and the blunt tip of his phallus nudges at me.

“Do not worry, my beauty, I won’t leave you wanting.”

Oh. Oh Naamah, he feels so much bigger this way. Naamah and Eisheth, can he even fit? Oh gods, oh Elua. No, wait, it is too much at once, too sharp, too broad, and I am not prepared! I--

I hear the pain and shock in my cry as though it belongs to someone else, mingled with his groan of pleasure as he breeches me and continues to press deeper. I squirm and writhe, trying to pull away, but he has one arm tight about my waist and the other presses hard between my shoulderblades, pinning me to the mattress. “Just relax, my beauty, relax, almost there, almost. It will ease… Naamah’s tits, you are so tight about me. Nngh that feels good. That’s it, just a little more.”

My breath is coming short and sharp, and I cannot think, cannot speak, cannot move. Finally, finally, after what feels like an age, he stops, his hips pressed to mine. “There,” he says, gruff with desire. “You see? That wasn’t so bad, was it. I paid for your virginity, little star. You would not wish to leave me wanting, would you?”

I make some sort of sound, I cannot for the life of me say what, and he laughs. It echoes strangely through my body and makes me turn my hips up toward him on instinct. “Ahh, yes, do that again. I knew you would see. Sometimes it takes a little bit for the discomfort to ease the first time but with the way you rode my hand I knew you would enjoy this. Come on then. Rock yourself back into me.”

I try, but it must not be enough, for a moment later his hands are on my hips and he is leaning over me, dragging almost all the way out before pressing hard and fast back into me. I arch toward the bed, but he holds me steady, trapped right where he wants me as I writhe and squirm and buck beneath him.

 

It was my lord’s face, swimming behind my eyelids, and his voice in my mind which allowed me to spill again as he wanted. I would endure, for him. I would do everything that was asked of me, for him. To see the way energy would light his face and how he would pace his study, his mind both a hundred leagues away and yet in the present. I would answer his questions precisely and I would see him smile. Feel his hand at my face. “Finally,” he would say. “That is precisely what I needed. Now I can fix this and be at peace.” Maybe he would even kiss my forehead as he had when I was young - something which has grown less and less often as of late. Maybe--

He shifted again, and caught me about the chest, lifting me up and back as he sat on his heels. My own face, flushed and hazy with desire, mouth pink and swollen with kisses, stared back at me from the mirror, Bouvarre’s desperate face over my shoulder as his tanned arm bisected my pale breast.

His other hand stroked my phallus, spent as I was, and made me shudder with sensation. “You do so enjoy our visits,” he murmured in my ear, and lifted his hand to paint a starburst on my cheek in my own tacky seed. I jerked my face away - I could not help it - and he laughed, deep and rich and lovely. I hated that I loved to hear him laugh. I hated how I bit my lip against a moan at the way it trembled and twitched inside of me and how even now it made me blush and my body responded.

He noticed, of course, and his hands spread my knees so we both could see him shift and drive himself deeper. I cried out, my vision gone hazy for a moment, and in a trice he had my arms looped backward over his head, his hand lazily stroking me. “You are so beautiful,” he whispered in my ear, “half gone like this. You are made for this. Why else would you keep coming back, over and over to beg me to fill you if you did not enjoy it?”

“You know that I love you, my star. You know how happy it makes me to see you, and you love me too, don’t you? You do! Look at the way you respond to me, even so freshly spent! You never have to say it, Alcuin, not ever - I know. I already know. Forget this place. Come away with me. I will give you everything you have ever wanted if you will but stay with me!”

I gasped and shuddered, my hands tightened about his neck, caught hard between my duty and, yes, my pleasure, my disgust and my resolve. “Please my lord,” I whispered, head tipped back against his shoulder so that I did not have to watch myself in that cursed mirror misted about the edges with the heat between us. “Oh, oh my lord, please, you know what I want, what I need… Please! Ah! Ah, I am unraveling! Oh gods oh gods, if I could but… but feel you… Please!”

He groaned, dropping his head to kiss and bite at my neck as his hand tightened about my phallus to make me whimper. “Say it. I want you to say it. Come with me.”

I bit my lips as his movements jarred a broken cry from me.

“Come away with me. Say it!”

“I can’t!” It came out in a wail, and he threw me aside. The mirror wavered above me, tilted, and the room spun about us. Heavy, hard hands drew my legs up over his shoulders and pinned my wrists to the ground as I stirred too late. I could hardly move as he slammed himself back inside me. “Delaunay, Delaunay! I am sick to death of hearing that man’s name on your lips! You are mine! You should be mine!” I could barely breathe like this, and my thoughts spun. Speech, that one thing which I so prided myself upon, was miles away. “How can you deny me after all I have given you? How can you deny yourself what you so clearly want! Who else could love you the way I do? Delaunay cannot give you what I can! He will not let you go find yourself love! What hold does he have on you that you do his bidding? I love you, I love you, I love you! Alcuin--!”

I was numb. He let me go. Gathered me up like a child’s favorite toy. Held me. Rocked me. Stroked my hair. And cried.

 

He falls asleep holding me, and despite all that has happened, I remain awake. I ache. I am exhausted. But sleep seems as distant as the touch of dawn’s rose that blushes the hilltops out of his window. That had been nothing like I had imagined, and my heart lies leaden in my chest. I always wondered what it would be like, to have someone hold me like this, but now it feels too much, too close, too stifling. I want quiet isolation and solitude, but with the way he is holding me so close, I know that is impossible, even in his sleep.

I could not ask him. I could not get the conversation around to it, and he kept getting upset every time I tried. I spent more time soothing him and getting him to smile and laugh again than I did building it up. I am a man now, or so they say. A true Servant of Naamah. And this will be my life until I finish my marque and I can be free. Is this what I wanted? That glorious destiny that had glowed so golden bright before my eyes only hours ago? ...Then why do I feel as if I have lost something precious?

 

Afterward he offered me a set of new and princely clothes to wear home instead of the outfit I came in, but I refused him. I wanted no more of his gifts. There was only one thing I wanted of him now, really, and it was more precious than gold to me. He tried to ignore it, and tried to turn the conversation aside. I was gentle, but persistent. I would be leaving, and we had made a bargain. No, I would not stay the night, and nowhere in our contract was it so specified. Forgive me, my lord, but I have things which I must attend to, even tonight. Yes, the moon is high. Yes, the city is asleep. Yes, the household will be as well when I return, but even so, I must go.

In the end I knelt before his chair and kissed his hands, looking up into his face. “Please, my lord. Fulfill your promise to me and I will remember you with fondness when we have parted.”

Strange, the simple things which open the gates of the heart.

 

The yard was dark as we went outside, and I preoccupied with what I had heard. Guy, a silent presence behind me as I kissed Bouvarre goodbye for the last time through the carriage window. “Alcuin,” the merchant said, something strange in his voice, “stay with me. Please, I beg of you. Come with me. Your marque is bought, your duty done. Please. Do not go.”

“Goodbye, my lord,” I said to him. The driver clucked to his horses and the carriage began to move, leaving a softly rounded man standing in the yard alone, clutching his robes tight about him. The moon picked out his face and hands, and then we were gone.


End file.
